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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoFred Squillante | DispatchEric Cherryholmes, general manager of Ezzo Sausage, stands amid trash at Lockwood Park Apartments. The apartments have since been demolished by the city. Ezzo wants to buy the site to allow for future expansion.

The crime, blight and rodents at the Lockwood Park Apartments became such a problem that owners
of a longtime business next door were thinking about moving.

Ezzo Sausage looked at locations in Lancaster, Canal Winchester and Pataskala.
In the end, the company stayed at the South Side location it had moved into in 1978. That’s because
the city of Columbus demolished the vacant apartment buildings, allowing Ezzo to expand.

The company, at 1802 Lockbourne Rd., goes before the city’s Development Commission on Thursday.
The company plans to add 10 jobs and spend as much as $4 million on an 8,500-square-foot addition
for drying pepperoni. That expansion will be on the company’s current property.

But Ezzo will buy the 3.6-acre former apartment site from the city for $200,000 once the
property is rezoned for limited manufacturing, said John Turner, Columbus’ land-redevelopment
administrator.

The company could expand on that property later, he said. The site, directly south of Ezzo, will
remain a green space until then.

Neighborhood leaders are thrilled that Ezzo is staying and expanding. And they’re just as happy
the apartments are gone.

“I don’t know how we can express how important that was,” said Cassaundra Patterson, a member of
the Columbus South Side Area Commission who lives in the nearby Innis Gardens neighborhood.

Jim Griffin, who leads the commission, echoed that. “We don’t want to lose them,” he said of
Ezzo.

Over the years, Ezzo’s owners grew tired of the vandalism and theft that they attributed to the
apartments, said general manager Eric Cherryholmes. People also dumped trash at the apartments,
where one of the last tenants died in an arson fire in May 2008.